society, with whom actually no one wanted to have anything to do no matter what their hypocritical pretenses, Roithamer had frequently donated sums of money for the benefit of prisoners released from penal institutions, but in the end he dropped the idea of opening Altensam to ex-convicts, it seemed a better idea to sell Altensam and assign the proceeds to the ex-convicts, though he did not quite know how to go about this, there is in fact already some talk that he made provision for the sale of Altensam and assignment of the proceeds to former prisoners of the penitentiaries at Garsten, Stein, and Stuben, entrusting the execution of this plan to his Schwanenstadt notary Süssner, the same notary who had been taking care of all the Altensam affairs for many years, in his will. But of the actual contents of Roithamer’s will I had no knowledge up to this point in time, even though Hoeller told me immediately upon my arrival at his house that Roithamer had, 1) left a will and 2) ordered Altensam sold, the proceeds to go to the ex-convicts of Garsten, Stein, and Stuben, he would not have been Hoeller had he not understood our friend’s last will and testament as I did, as characteristic of Roithamer’s whole being. It had always been the outsiders, especially those pushed to the outermost fringes of society, for whom Roithamer felt sympathies, the criminal elements, with whom no one wanted to have anything to do, were always secure in his affection, for this tendency Roithamer had always been under attack or at least regarded with suspicion, most of all these sympathies of his for the most miserable members of society, the most helpless in the world, had soon earned him the radical dislike of his family and they, his family or what was left of them, whichever, must have been horrified at the reading of his will, suddenly hearing all those provisions in favor of the poorest, the most unwanted, society’s pariahs, openly set forth, now they had suddenly to face it that he not only had what they considered these eccentric ideas about leaving his inheritance to criminals, murderers, no matter what kind of criminals, but that he had actually carried these ideas out in good earnest, this shock suffered by his family and all those involved in a widely ramified conspiracy with his family must have been an experience of primal horror, for while I know that Roithamer was always in earnest about everything in his mind, though the people around him could never quite believe it, his ideas as also his feelings were always most earnest and most serious, his ideas and feelings always had to be in full accord with his existence, otherwise it would have been simply impossible for him to go on, to keep going, they, beginning with his closest kin who, in Altensam, probably never could think or would think so, namely that he would actually carry out his ideas, yet he had carried them out in his will just as in his life, all his life had been a carrying out of his ideas in reality. The sale of Altensam, I thought, would be no easy task for the notary from Schwanenstadt, who could not sell for less than a certain minimum, while being an open target for all sorts of harassment from, first and foremost, Roithamer’s brothers. What would Roithamer’s parents, especially his father, have said of their middle son selling Altensam through a notary, I wondered, looking out the window down at the raging Aurach, and then: but the father in particular must surely have taken into account that to leave Altensam to his middle son meant the end of Altensam, for old Roithamer of course knew full well what manner of man his middle son was, and I firmly believe, I thought, that when old Roithamer left Altensam to his middle son, he knew that he had thereby legalized the end of Altensam, for old Roithamer probably knew or at least felt or must have seen or felt or known that Altensam’s time had come, that these times are no longer right for the likes of
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